I am on a plane, for 12 hours. So I watched Collateral Beauty on the seat back screen in front of me. I like a good, sensitive movie with meaning. My wife and I call them girl movies. We say that I go to them with her and she comes to guy movies with me, just to mess with the stereotypes, cause we enjoy a nice emotional range.

But today I welled up and cried so much, so often. I wondered if my neighbors could tell. I was feeling so much more sadness and joy from the story than I would expect. I love to feel, it was nice. I wondered why, and after, it was obvious.

I had just lead hundreds of person-hours of deep self-therapy in SOS workshops in Sweden. Now, these Swedes look pretty and sweet, but they come from the Vikings! And when they did their emotional healing, the roar from ages of Anger, the thrashing and wailing of decades of grief came out with such force I had never seen. Had I finally gotten in over my head with this Senses of the Soul business? Would they be alright?

With trust in the technology of Kundalini Yoga we were using, and the sacred space of it’s patron saint, Guru Ram Das, we kept up. And there were breakthroughs you can call miracles; though far from unexplainable, no less welcomed with gratitude. I was amazed how steady and strong my training prepared me to be able to hold strong that safe space while they cried, so they might not get lost in the feelings.

Many of the kriyas have strong movements, some rhythmic, some erratic with instructions to “go wild”. They say animals shake violently when safe after escaping near death in the claws of a predator to release the trauma-induced endorphins and stress to the nervous system. That’s what these Vikings were doing, class after class.

And that’s what my system was doing there on the plane. I had done my job, I heard all the horror stories that happen to so many people inside nice homes, and the scars carried, the lives disrupted. Now, assisted by the movie, it was time for me to feel and let go of the pain I must.have absorbed. Nice.

I asked the local teacher why, as it seems to me, that these daughters of ancient Shield Maidens were so…. well, loud. Do they have more abuse here than in the States, generational pain from history, or just more willingness to express it? Yet it’s a culture that keeps it pretty polite? I liked her answer: Sweden has a fairly long history now of peace and prosperity, at least in the society at large. Perhaps the psyche feels it is safe enough to shake it out now. Add to that the circumstances: ashram, the teachings, the guidance.

Is the war over in your life? First we have to get ourselves out of the jaws of threatening situations – as much as we can. The rest of our protection in this wild world must be fortified from within, the inner work, the regular practice. With these conditions, trauma CAN be released. This is self-therapy, the ability of everyone.